


Either Or

by brionylarkin



Series: Katie 'verse [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Parent Klaus Hargreeves, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, The Commission sucks, or he could've been anyway, this is why YLOMILOY isn't possible :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24689941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brionylarkin/pseuds/brionylarkin
Summary: The Commission discovers an anomaly in the time stream and eliminates it.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves (mentioned), Klaus Hargreeves & Original Character(s) (mentioned), Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Katie 'verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785037
Comments: 8
Kudos: 151





	Either Or

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read the previous story in this series, all you really need to know about it is that Klaus adopts his friend's kid and raises the baby with her. He's also sober  
> There's some stuff mentioned here that hasn't actually happened yet in YLOMILOY but it's really just the one major thing.

The Apocalypse file is not on Dot’s desk. Five sighs, vaguely remembering the Handler saying something about a Record Storage Room deeper into the belly of the Commission. He checks his watch, noting the thirty minutes left of lunch—never let it be said that the Commission is anything but good to its employees, murders notwithstanding—and heads downstairs. 

It’s easier than Five expects to gain access to the Commission’s files. He turns three corners, then hugs a wall to avoid a security guard. There’s a door behind the guard and, thankfully, a window in the door. 

Five sees the shelf on the other side of the door and jumps inside with the ease of long practice. 

The room is brightly lit, completely empty, and full of filing cabinets. 

“Amateurs,” Five can’t help scoffing to himself. He does a quick scan of nearby labels, deciphering the filing system, then blinking in disbelief. Temporal order? They’re not even trying to discourage theft at this point. 

He speedwalks down the aisle, quickly coming to the end of the records. He stops in front of the last cabinet in the back of the room and opens the bottom drawer. 

The very last file in the drawer is labeled ‘April 1st, 2019’. Five grabs it and shoves it up his shirt, turning to leave. He’s not stupid enough to stick around the scene of the crime. 

But, something on the second to last filing cabinet catches his eye and stops his escape attempt in his tracks. There is an entire drawer labeled ‘Hargreeves’. If he was any of his siblings, Five would do a double take. He may not be a records keeper, but even field operatives know that specific people only have files if they are  _ very  _ important to the time stream’s continuity. 

He can’t help himself. Five opens the drawer. 

Inside, are a few normal-sized files dedicated to Reginald, Grace, and Pogo. The next seven are labeled 1 through 7. Five’s is thicker than the average important person’s, as is to be expected. The real surprises are Vanya’s and Klaus’s.

Vanya’s is just the tiniest bit thicker than Five’s, but what really shocks him is that Klaus’s file is twice the size of Vanya’s.

Furrowing his brows, Five pulls out his brother’s file. The first item inside is a paper-sized glossy picture of Klaus from when he was an infant. The baby is held in an unfamiliar girl’s arms, presumably his biological mother. Neither are smiling. 

After that is the typical birth through death information that all files contain, the ‘correct’ path that the person is expected to take in life. Born in Dresden, Germany. Died during the Apocalypse that extinguished all life on Earth. Drug addict. Medium

Five’s mouth opens in shock. After that are  _ dozens  _ of case files revolving around Klaus. He flips open the first one and reads the conclusion. It’s a cut-and-dry assassination of Klaus’s biological grandmother, to give his mother no way to keep him. The next is to sabotage a pair of women’s shoes in order to… Five has to rub his eyes to make sure he’s not reading that wrong. To make Klaus fall down the stairs and break his jaw? 

“But, why would that be important?” Five murmurs to himself, flipping to the next case. There are three consecutive cases aimed at making Klaus buy drugs from the right dealers and one to push him into robbing a store, the crime that gets him sent to prison for six months at eighteen. 

The next one is where it gets confusing. It’s an assassination order for a woman named Kaitlin “Katie” Jones, an eighteen year old drug addict, in 2005. The woman is an addict in the same city as Klaus, but other than that Five sees no connection. 

It’s this confusion that has him examining the end of the case more carefully than he otherwise would. That’s where he finds the number of a connected file, which is… in the same drawer with the Hargreeves.

“What?” he can’t help saying out loud. Five puts Klaus’s file down on the ground and pulls the drawer open all the way. Shoved way in the back behind Vanya’s file is the file he’s looking for. The outside is labeled ‘Jones’, obviously connected with Katie Jones.

This is where Five’s brain comes to a screeching halt. 

See, the first thing in most people’s files is a picture, often a baby picture, to establish that the reader is looking at the correct file. The file labeled ‘Jones’ is no exception. It’s just that the picture is of Klaus, wearing  _ graduation robes _ of all things, tossing a toddler up into the air. 

Five turns the picture over, unwilling to believe his eyes. He is confronted with a clear label. 

‘Klaus Hargreeves and Elizabeth Jones-Hargreeves, Timeline 54C’

Five forces himself to read the rest of the file in complete shock. He knows that the Commission changes and shapes time, but he didn’t realize they kept track of it to this extent. Someone eliminated the girl who would have made Klaus happy, but these pictures and this  _ evidence  _ remain. 

He reads of a friendship, a sobriety pact, and an adoption (And, wasn’t that a shock? To learn that, in another timeline, Klaus would take in a baby that wasn’t even his). There’s more names that Five can’t force himself to absorb. These people are unconnected to the Klaus Five knows, but in another life, they would have been family. 

Five reads of a world without an Apocalypse, where Dr. Pogo kills Reginald because he realizes who he is living with. There, Klaus has full control of his powers. He has a family and a daughter. He even has a boyfriend. (Five skims over the time travel accident that led to Dave joining the Hargreeves in the twenty-first century, laughing quietly to himself. Only Klaus, he thinks, could fall in love with someone so far out of time.) 

Five doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there when the door slides open at the front of the room. He starts, shoving the Jones file under his shirt with the April 1st, 2019 one with the reflexes of someone used to keeping secrets. Quickly, he places Klaus’s file back with the others, eases the drawer closed, and jumps back to the next hallway. 

Mission accomplished, Five heads to the nearest bathroom on autopilot to read the Apocalypse file. He just can’t seem to get the Jones family out of his head. The Commission files were detailed, but never perfect. 

Five could have had another niece. Idly, he wonders if Allison still lost custody of Claire in that world. How did she feel about Klaus having a daughter?

Also—he stops dead in the hallway, nearly sending an intern flying over him. Did Katie Jones’s existence stop the Apocalypse? If he could keep her from being killed..? No, that wouldn’t work. Five shakes his head and keeps walking. If he killed one group of assassins, more would come and he couldn’t defend Katie forever, not if she was meant to befriend Klaus and have a family. 

Where is he in all that, Five wonders. Did he never time travel, or just never come back? 

Hours later, after a failed attempt at reading the file, a painful talk with the Handler, and the destruction of the Temps Commission Headquarters, Five is back at the Academy. 

He lost the Apocalypse file during the fight, but the Jones file remains under his shirt. He hides it like he does his injury, but it remains a distraction at the back of his mind. 

As a time traveler, Five tries not to think of what could have been, but this discovery makes it difficult. He argues with himself over whether he should bring it up to Klaus, but ultimately decides that it would just be a distraction.

Yes, Five nods to himself in a bowling alley. He’ll show Klaus the file after they stop Vanya. Maybe it’ll give him the courage to get sober and be happy in this timeline too. 

Maybe… Five rubs his chin, deep in thought. Klaus’s time traveling boyfriend wouldn’t have been affected by Katie Jones’s death. Maybe Five could get Dave for Klaus.

He shakes his head to clear his thoughts as he hears the tell-tale clatter of a Commission message. All that is for  _ after  _ they stop the Apocalypse. 


End file.
